Farmed Out

by Christy Goerzen

  “Anna will be excited to meet you,” Ruth said, passing me a jar of homemade plum jam.

  We were having a “bite” in the farmhouse kitchen. The Friesens’ idea of a bite was an all-you-can-eat deluxe spread. I’d never seen anything like it. Their huge table was covered in pitchers of milk and juice, loaves of bread and buns, jars of jam and honey, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, and plates of cheese, meat, tomatoes and pickles. I had loaded up my plate and was about to dig into a bun filled with Swiss cheese and ham.

  “Anna?” my mom and I said in unison.

  “Our daughter,” Ruth said. “She’s about your age, Maddie. Fifteen.”

  “She’s at a meeting right now,” Klaus said. “The summer fair is coming up.”

  Fifteen. The same age as me. Thoughts flew around in my mind. What did Anna look like? Would we get along?

  “That’s great that Maddie will have someone her own age here,” my mom said, cracking open a hard-boiled egg. Usually on our adventures there were never any other kids around, just adults. Ha, I thought. Not this time, Mom.

  Klaus offered my mom a plate of sausages.

  “Oh, no thank you,” said my mom. “I’m a vegetarian.”

  Ruth and Klaus exchanged looks. I thought I saw Klaus roll his eyes. I took the plate from Klaus and helped myself to four sausages. They looked delicious.

  It didn’t take my mom long to launch into dumb-question mode.

  “Why did you become farmers? When do you harvest your wheat? How many chickens do you have?”

  Klaus said something about being a fifth-generation farmer. I tuned out the rest. Farming wasn’t the most exciting topic.

  While my mom grilled the farmers, I looked around. The house looked about a hundred years old. The walls were white, with plain yellow curtains on the windows. The only picture on the wall was an old black-and-white family photo where no one was smiling. I couldn’t see a TV or computer anywhere.

  “Do you wake up every day and notice the smell of manure, or do you become immune to it after a while?” Mom asked.

  I sank down in my chair. Ruth and Klaus smiled. My mom kept yakking.

  After we ate, the Friesens showed us to our room. A four-poster iron bed stood in the center of the room, covered in a colorful quilt. Great. Sharing a bed with my mother made a bad situation even worse.

  “Oooh!” my mom exclaimed, clapping her hands as she looked around the room. “Very Little House on the Prairie. And look, Maddie, we get to share a bed. It’ll be like a sleepover!”

  Shut up, Mom, I thought for the hundredth time that day. I wasn’t sure I could handle a whole week of constant embarrassment. Hopefully I could find somewhere to hide out and draw for the Canvas art contest.

  After showing us our room, Ruth and Klaus led us out to the front yard to give us the “grand tour.” Just then, a teenage girl turned into the driveway on a red bike.

  “Here’s our girl,” Klaus said. The girl skidded neatly to a stop, a small cloud of dust billowing from beneath her back tire. “Anna, these are our volunteers for the next week, Lynn and Maddie Turner.”

  “Hey,” Anna said with a small smile. She had braces and wore her red hair in a long braid.

  “How was the 4-H meeting?” Ruth asked.

  Anna shrugged. “Pretty good.”

  “I just checked Frida,” Klaus said. “I’m certain that she will calve in the next few days.”

  Anna nodded and turned to us. “I’ve got a cow that’s about to pop.”

  I wondered how many other farm volunteers Anna had had to greet so far that summer. She didn’t seem too excited by us.

  “You and Maddie are the same age, dear,” Klaus said. “Maybe you two would like to spend some time together.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Anna said, not looking in my direction. “If I have time.” She turned on her heel and clumped up the stairs in her muddy work boots.

  Adults saying, “Hey kids, why don’t you two play,” is exactly what will prevent teenage girls from getting to know each other. I didn’t blame Anna for leaving.

  Next on the farm tour was the pigpen. It was the width of two cars, with solid wood walls all around it. My mom and I peered over the wall at the big mama pig laying on her side with her piglets jostling to get some milk.

  “Look at that poor runt,” my mom said. “The other piglets are squishing him.”

  “Such is the life of a runt,” Ruth said. “Often they don’t survive.”

  My mom looked like she might cry. She’d probably try to sneak the runt home with us as a pet.

  Ruth and Klaus showed us the vegetable garden, the garlic field, the machine shed and the barn. A clear, slow-moving river ran along one side of the farm, near the road, and a tree-covered mountain rose up behind the farmhouse.

  My mom asked inane questions the entire tour.

  “Do pigs really eat slops? Is it hard to milk a cow? Do you use a horse and plow?”

  The Friesens took turns patiently responding to my mom’s questions. Yes, Klaus said, the pigs liked apple peels and table scraps. No, Ruth replied, it just takes a little practice to get the milk out. No, Klaus said, he used his tractors to till the fields.

  In the afternoon heat, the farm smell was everything I’d expected, and more.

  It was a combination of various types of animal poop, hay, dirt and something else even more powerful.

  “What’s that smell?” my mom asked, plugging her nose and squeezing her eyes shut.

  Ruth chuckled. She pointed past the vegetable garden. “The goats.”

  “That’s your first job,” Klaus said.

  Chapter Four

  We were outside the goat shed, standing in three inches of stinky mud. About twenty goats surrounded us, bleating and chewing. I had never seen a goat in real life before. They had creepy eyes with long narrow pupils.

  “What are all their names?” my mom asked. My mother named everything, from her hair dryer (Barbara) to her car (Dave, of course). Her favorite high heels were named Mary and Rhoda.

  “They don’t have names,” Ruth said.

  “We don’t like to get too attached,” Klaus said. “They are our business, not pets.”

  Klaus handed each of us a shovel.

  “First you will muck out the shed.”

  What kind of torture chamber was this place? Mucking out a goat shed?

  “You do it like so,” he said, skimming his shovel over the floor to scoop up hard round goat poops. “Then, you dump it over the side for composting later.” He turned the shovel over and tapped it on the open side of the shed. The little poops plopped into a pile.

  I looked down at my beloved Andy Warhol T-shirt. It already had a streak of mud on it.

  Then I felt a tug on my skirt. A brown and white goat had a mouthful of black ruffles.

  “Ack, no!” I exclaimed, trying to pry the skirt out of its mouth. I got it out, but a big chunk had ripped off. The goat scampered away, spraying muck all over my legs.

  “I told you not to bring those clothes,” my mom said, in that way mothers are so good at.

  “You can borrow something of Anna’s, if you don’t have anything suitable,” Ruth said.

  I didn’t want to wear farm-girl clothes, but I didn’t want mine to get all ripped and stained either.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Five minutes later I was decked out in one of Anna’s T-shirts and light blue jeans. I felt like such a dork.

  When I returned to the goat shed, my mom was shoveling poop and singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to herself. She changed the words to “Young Lynn Turner Had a Farm.”

  I decided to take out my anger by shoveling. I dreamed of being back in the city, sitting in my favorite café with my sketchbook.

  “Isn’t this fun, Maddie?” my mom said. “Hard work builds character.”

  I didn’t respond. I shoveled harder, trying to drown out whatever other clichés were coming out of her mouth.

  A few minutes later my mom
leaned her shovel against the shed wall. She raised her arms and did a big stretch. “Well, this has been fun. I wonder what we get to do next.”

  I straightened up. “What are you talking about? We’re supposed to clean the whole shed.”

  “Oh. Right,” my mom said, looking disappointed.

  If my mom was going to not like the farm work, then I was going to love it.

  I continued to muck out the shed, whistling as I worked.

  My mom said something, but I pretended not to hear her over the sound of my vigorous scooping.

  I was getting into a rhythm. Scoop poop, poop scoop, I repeated in my head.

  I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by, but when I looked up again, my mom was gone.

  “Mom?” I called. I poked my head around the side of the shed.

  There she was, with a small herd of goats nibbling at her sleeves and nuzzling her knees. She stroked a brown goat’s floppy ears. She was holding something in her right hand. Two of the goats had words written on them.

  “Mom, what are you doing?”

  She looked up, her hand poised over the left butt cheek of a white goat. I realized the thing in her hand was a muddy stick.

  “Oh hi, Madison,” she said, as though using dirt to scribble on farm animals was normal. “Come see. I’m naming the goats.”

  The white goat scurried away. It had Glenda printed in big muddy letters on its flank. The butt of another goat victim said Gigi.

  “Mom, have you gone completely nuts?” I said finally, tossing down my shovel. The goats scattered.

  “Not at all,” she replied, her chin held high. “I’m writing their names on the goats so that the Friesens can remember who they are.”

  “Well, stop it right now!” I yelled.

  Ruth and Klaus approached, carrying armfuls of hay. I covered my face with my hands in pure embarrassment. Oh no.

  “Good gracious!” Ruth exclaimed when she saw the goats.

  “Meet Glenda and Gigi,” my mom said. “And there’s Grace, Geena, Giselle and Ginger, but I haven’t gotten to them yet. I thought I would start a tradition of naming your farm animals,” she added proudly.

  I sucked in a breath, waiting to see what the Friesens would say. Klaus slowly took his pipe out of his breast pocket, lit it and took a puff.

  “Gigi and Glenda are heading to the slaughterhouse tomorrow,” he said. “We supply restaurants with goat meat.”

  My mom’s eyes went pink and teary. “Gigi and Glenda?” she said, her voice weak. “That’s what these goats are destined for? Certain death?”

  I understood why the Friesens didn’t name their animals.

  “Why don’t you take a break and come in for some iced tea,” Ruth said.

  “Okay,” my mom said. She dropped the muddy stick.

  “I’m going to go for a walk,” I said. “But I’ll come in soon.”

  I wanted to wander around the farm and get inspired for the art contest. I thought it was doubtful I’d find something to draw, but I might as well stay away from my mother for a while.

  I walked past the tractors and the vegetable garden. It amazed me how they got those long lines of vegetables so perfectly straight. Past the garden was the barn. The door was wide open in the late afternoon sun. It was one of those classic red barns with white trim, like what you see in children’s books.

  Anna sat inside on a wooden stool, oiling some leather straps. Behind her was an enormously pregnant brown cow. Her sides stuck out so much that she barely fit in her stall.

  “Hi,” I said from the doorway.

  “Hey,” Anna said, not looking up.

  Above the cow’s stall was a hand-painted nameplate that read Frida Cowlo.

  “Your cow’s name is Frida Cowlo?”

  Anna nodded, still not looking up.

  “After Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter?” I continued.

  “Yeah.” Anna paused and looked at me with narrowed eyes. Then she turned back to her work.

  I couldn’t hide my enthusiasm. “Cool! She’s one of my favorite artists.”

  Anna sighed and set down the leather straps. “Is there something you wanted?” She looked up again. “Why are you wearing my clothes?”

  Oh crap. I had forgotten about that. My time at Quiet River Farm so far was a string of embarrassing moments. “Uh, your mom lent them to me,” I said. “For working in.”

  I tried to fix the situation by acting like it was no big deal. “So, what are you doing?”

  “Look, I’m very busy here.” She turned away.

  It appeared that Anna hated me. With her freckles and round blue eyes, she looked like she’d be nice.

  “I just came to say hi.” I paused. No response. “Okay, bye.” I slouched out of the barn.

  My mom was a weirdo, I was wearing a 4-H Cow Club T-shirt, and the one person my age in this boring place hated me. At least the food was good. But I still wondered what I had done to deserve this.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning a rooster woke me up. Seriously. Just like in cartoons. It even made a cock-a-doodle-doo sound.

  “Make it stop,” my mom groaned and turned over, pulling her pillow around her ears.

  There was a sharp knock on our door. “Bacon’s on!” Klaus bellowed.

  Remembering the spread the day before, I rolled myself out of bed.

  I couldn’t wait to see what breakfast would be.

  “Mom? You coming?” No answer. She didn’t eat bacon anyway. I prodded her a few times, but she kept saying, “Five more minutes, five more minutes!” Let sleeping mothers lie, I thought.

  The smells of fresh coffee and bread rushed into my nose as soon as I entered the kitchen.

  “Good morning!” Ruth and Klaus said.

  The table was laden with food— canned peaches, bread, butter, cheese, eggs, jam and orange juice. Had I died and gone to Breakfast Heaven? This sure beat the stale cereal and almost-expired milk I usually ate.

  I looked at the clock above the sink. Six o’clock. Farmers sure did get up early.

  “Is your mother coming?” Klaus asked.

  “Yeah, I think she’ll wake up soon.”

  The three of us sat down and started filling our plates. Half an hour passed with no sign of my mom. I didn’t mind so much. It was nice and quiet without her.

  “Is Anna here?” I asked.

  “She’s been in the barn since five,” Ruth said. Anna was starting to make me feel like a lazy kid.

  After breakfast I walked along the edge of the garlic field, thinking about the Canvas art contest. I had my sketchbook and pencils with me in case I got inspired. Time was running out.

  It was misty and fresh and perfectly farmlike. Everything was completely still. The only sound was that rooster, still crowing somewhere in the distance.

  I plunked myself down on a patch of yellowed grass and opened my sketchbook. I had taped the ad for the art contest to the inside cover. I read it for the hundredth time.

  The First Annual “Face of Youth” Art Contest—for artists ages 13–17. Think you’ve got what it takes? This year’s theme is Portraits. Send us your best drawing, painting or mixed media piece of an interesting face, and you could win an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City. First prize includes an all-access pass to the city’s art galleries. The winner will be featured on the cover of Canvas Magazine. Entries must be postmarked by July 25.

  I got a rush of adrenaline. July 25 was now only five days away. I had to think of the most fabulous drawing ever. And fast.

  Harold the dog ran up and poked his wet nose into my armpit. I giggled. He lay down and wiggled around on his back for a belly rub.

  “Oh yes, Harold, what a good boy!” I said, rubbing his stomach. I’m more of a cat person, but Harold seemed sweet. He soon settled into a regal pose beside me, surveying the farm. I decided that Harold was as good a subject as any, and picked up my pencil.

  After a few minutes I felt someone watching me. Anna was leaning against
the barn, looking at me with her chin lifted.

  I turned back to my sketchbook. I heard Anna’s footsteps as she clumped over to me.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked, standing over me.

  “Drawing Harold,” I said.

  She peered at the drawing. So far I had sketched his floppy ears and the top of his head.

  “Looks pretty good.” She sat down and started petting Harold. “Harold’s an excellent judge of character. He only likes good people.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Keep sketching, or stop? I continued to sketch.

  “So you’re from Vancouver?” Anna said after a while.

  “Um-hmm,” I answered. By then I had drawn most of Harold’s face.

  Silence. When I was working on Harold’s collar, Anna spoke again.

  “We don’t get a lot of volunteers from Vancouver,” she said. “Mostly we get hippie types from Nelson looking for an ‘experience.’” She made air quotes with her fingers when she said “experience.”

  “That’s what my mom is here for,” I said. “Except she calls it an ‘adventure.’” I made air quotes.

  Anna laughed. Her laugh was hard, like it was coming out of a forty-year-old woman who smokes a lot.

  “I can’t stand hippies,” Anna said matter-of-factly.

  “Yeah, my mom is really into the DDP factor when it comes to our adventures,” I said.

  “DDP?” Anna asked.

  “Drums, dreadlocks and patchouli.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “DDP! That totally describes the volunteers.”

  “One time my mom took me to a drum circle at the beach,” I said, “and some guy wouldn’t let us sit on this log because the spirit of Jimi Hendrix was already sitting on it.”

  Anna laughed again even harder. “Was he like, ‘Dude, that’s Jimi’s log’?” She had the slow, drawling voice of a hippie down perfectly.

  Pretty soon we were both rolling around on the grass, killing ourselves laughing over hippie jokes.

  “My dad told me that your mom named the goats,” Anna said. “He had a heck of a time scrubbing that dirt off.”

  “Yeah, can you believe it?” I said. “I’m worried about what else she might do.”

  “Do you want to go swimming in the river?” Anna asked.